Riddles

• Four dilly-dandies
• Four stick standies
• Two crookers
• Two lookers
• And a wig wag

• When I am alive I do not speak.
• Anyone who wants to takes me captive and cuts off my head.
• They bite my bare body
• I do no harm to anyone unless they cut me first.
• Then I soon make them cry.

• My home is not quiet but I am not loud.
• The lord has meant us to journey together.
• I am faster than he and sometimes stronger,
• But he keeps on going for longer.
• Sometimes I rest but he runs on.
• For as long as I am alive I live in him.
• If we part from one another
• It is I who will die.

• I am all on my own,
• Wounded by iron weapons and scarred by swords.
• I often see battle.
• I am tired of fighting.
• I do not expect to be allowed to retire from warfare
• Before I am completely done for.
• At the wall of the city, I am knocked about
• And bitten again and again.
• Hard edged things made by the blacksmith's hammer attack me.
• Each time I wait for something worse.
• I have never been able to find a doctor who could make me better
• Or give me medicine made from herbs.
• Instead the sword gashes all over me grow bigger day and night.

• I was abandoned by my mother and father.
• I wasn't yet breathing.
• A kind woman covered me with clothes,
• Kept me and looked after me,
• Cuddled me as close as if I had been her own child.
• Under that covering I grew and grew.
• I was unkind to my adopted brothers and sisters.
• This lovely woman fed me
• Until I was big enough to set out on my own.
• She had fewer of her own dear sons and daughters because she did so.